They found a California Rubicon in the next row. Cruz changed out the plates and climbed back in.
The next stop was fast and expensive. They paid four hundred dollars for a jet-black natural-hair wig that fit snugly over Shay’s thick, chin-length hair. Shay said that her mother had lost her hair to chemotherapy and didn’t want to go anywhere until she had some hair back.
“She doesn’t have to be embarrassed, honey,” said the nice lady who ran the shop. “We deal with this all the time. We’ve put wigs on the showgirls here, and nobody ever knew.”
—
When they got to the shopping center, they found Cade, Odin, and Twist leaning against the pickup. Cruz pulled into a parking space as close as he could, and Shay and X climbed out, with Cruz a few steps behind them. “Where’s Fenfang?” Shay asked.
Twist poked a thumb toward the Camry. “Trying her new clothes.”
Shay leaned toward him. “There’re no phones in there?”
“No. We made sure of that.”
Behind them, the back door of the Camry opened, and Fenfang, wearing a yellow shirt, khaki pants, and red high-tops, struggled to get out. Odin hurried over to help, and she told him, “My legs…the nerves…something is not correct.”
“Hey, don’t get out yet,” Shay called. Fenfang sat with her legs dangling out of the door, and Shay helped her with the wig. After a few twists and tugs, they got it in place, and Fenfang, straight, shiny hair falling to her shoulders, said, “Yes?”
Shay stepped back. “Yes.”
Fenfang rubbed a lock between her fingers and said, “It is only a costume, but…I feel better.”
“I’m glad,” Shay said.
Odin gave a thumbs-up over Shay’s shoulder, and for the first time, Fenfang smiled.
—
Cruz said he needed to grab something inside the mall. Cade nudged Shay and asked, “When was the last time you ate anything? Like, maybe, yesterday morning?” Shay shrugged: since losing West, she hadn’t thought about food except to get a burger for her dog.
“C’mon,” Cade said. “You won’t be any good to us if you don’t put something in your stomach.” Shay reluctantly agreed to go to the food court with him, they’d get sandwiches for everybody. Odin said he was coming, too, that Shay wouldn’t know a vegetarian sandwich “if it bit her in the butt.”
Twist said he’d keep Fenfang company and took charge of X’s leash.
“You wanna sit or you wanna practice walking a bit with a gimp and a mutt?” Twist asked Fenfang. Fenfang pushed herself off the backseat and said she’d like to walk. Twist worked the leash and cane in one hand and offered her the crook of his other elbow. She held on lightly and asked, “What is your problem for this cane? You had it when you saved us, so it is from before, yes?”
“Yes, but it’s nothing, really. An old…sports injury,” he said. “Now let’s talk about you.”
They took a lap around the parking lot, with Twist gently probing about her life back in China. She told him that she’d grown up working seven days a week with her parents on the family rice farm, that they’d never been more than a few months out of debt. There’d been a brother, the firstborn, but he’d died as a toddler. She’d been studying computer science at university and hoped to get a “dream job” with an American-based company in Dandong that would pay her enough that her parents could retire.
“We live with my grandparents, my other relations, too. My best friend from when I was little is always Liko. We were born on the same day.”
Twist had been preoccupied with so many details about the raid and their escape over the last few hours, it hadn’t occurred to him that Fenfang might have family back in China that they should contact. He stopped and turned to her.
“Your parents—is there a way to contact them? Email? Phone?” He held up his phone. “We’d have to get you a different phone, one that allows international calls.”
Fenfang let go of Twist, and after some serious thought, she said, “My family will think I am dead, it has been so long. If I contact them now…I do not want to make danger for them.”
Twist nodded. “I understand. But…think about it. You might send them a message of some sort to ease their minds. Let them know you’re alive.”
Fenfang looked at him and said, “We will see how my life develops.”
She took his arm to walk again, and turned the conversation back on Twist. “It is very strange that you should be with Shay and Odin. As if they are your family. But you do not know each other long.”
Twist was taken aback by Fenfang’s directness—but liked it.
“You’re right. It is very strange, but Shay isn’t somebody you brush off. Never met anyone quite like her. She’s got a nose like granite.”
“Granite?”
“It’s a rock.”
“I do not understand your idiom,” Fenfang said.
“She’s tough. She’s made herself tough. Odin…he’s what is called a high-functioning autistic. That means—”
“I know this,” Fenfang said. “That may be true with me, also.”
“Okay. Well, their parents got killed, and they were taken in by their grandmother, and when she died, they were moved along to a state agency that takes care of orphans. Odin got involved with computers as a child, and with that peculiar focus that autistic kids can bring to their interests, he’s…sort of a genius, I guess. But he’s not very socially adept. Shay had always looked out for him, you know, and when he took off after the raid on the lab, she worried he couldn’t handle it out in the world, especially not in hiding from Singular. She followed him to L.A., and that’s where I met her. They are very unusual people. Both of them.”
“I think you are, too,” Fenfang said.
“Weird’s more like it,” said Twist. “I don’t try to be, but that’s just the way it is. If you’re weird, you gotta live with it.”
“I think I am also weird.”
“Good,” said Twist. “Because you know what? When any worthwhile thing is done in the world, it’s usually done by somebody weird.”
—
Fifteen minutes later, Cade, Cruz, Shay, and Odin were back at their cars with bags of food, a pillow, and an evolving plan. Cade would leave the group and drive to Salt Lake City, where he would send a reply to the message on the BlackWallpaper Facebook page. Singular’s security experts would track it and, with any luck, conclude that the Rembys, the artist from L.A., and the girl with two brains were hiding out in Salt Lake.
“Need to decide exactly what we want to say,” Cade said.
Shay scowled. “What’s there to say besides ‘Go to hell’?”
“I’m not sure it matters what we say,” said Twist. “The point is just to ping them from a state we’re not in.”
Cade said, “They were careful and cryptic in their note to us because they’re afraid we’ll go to the police, and they want deniability. We should think the same way.”
“No. Tell them the truth,” Odin broke in. “Tell them I’m going to crack all the flash drives and spam the FBI and the CIA and the networks with them.”
“Let’s not do that just yet,” said Twist. “We need to think about what we’ll do next. So, Cade, let’s string them along in this first contact. Like Odin says, we tell them the truth, something that they’ll buy—tell them we need time to think things over.”
Cade raised an eyebrow at Shay, and she shrugged. “Yeah, sure, tell ’em that.”
“Gotta fly,” Cruz said, and jingled a set of keys.
“Who’s the pillow for?” Twist asked, eyeing a bag in Cruz’s hand.
Cruz tipped his head at Shay. “She’s gotta sleep sooner or later.”
Cade would take the pickup; Twist, Odin, and Fenfang, the car; and Shay, Cruz, and X would go in the Jeep. After a round of hugs, they drove in a convoy back to I-80, then east on I-80 to Fernley, where Cade went his lonesome way up the interstate and the others turned south on Highway 95.
—
&n
bsp; Cruz and Shay talked about Singular for a while, and about Fenfang, then Shay yawned and said, “You got me figured out. Where’s that pillow?”
She hadn’t slept in two days, and when her head hit the pillow, scrunched against the window, she was out. But not in peace. The scene in the prison, with West bleeding on the floor, looking up at her, pain in his eyes, urging her to save herself, ran through her subconscious like a tangled loop of film, in full Technicolor and surround sound.
She moaned in her sleep, and shook, and Cruz was tempted to wake her, but he didn’t; he rested a hand on her leg and drove on. When Shay opened her eyes, finally, it was to more Technicolor and surround sound. This time, for real.
X was in the back, looking out the window. He’d slept as soundly as Shay. He yawned at her, turned again to the window, and yipped at all the brilliant lights outside.
Vegas.
4
Twist called a few minutes after Shay woke up, said he’d found a place: the Moulin Rose, a dumpy casino a couple of blocks off the Strip. It was a squat six-story structure with a lonely valet out front, looking for cars. “How does Twist find these places?” Shay asked.
Cruz shook his head. “He’s got a talent for it. He’s rich enough for Beverly Hills, but he lives in a Hollywood fleabag.”
The lobby of the Moulin Rose smelled like lilac perfume and beer, the carpet tacky underfoot. When they walked in, X was on his leash, the phony service-dog tag clipped to his collar. The guy behind the desk didn’t blink, and Shay got the impression they could’ve come in with an alligator.
Twist had managed to find three rooms in a row, with connecting doors from one to the next. Also uniting them was an easy-wash vinyl décor, from the furniture to the garish floral wallpaper. Odin was sitting on a brown vinyl couch in an end room, looking at Twist’s laptop. He had one of the stolen flash drives plugged into a USB port and was probing it. He did not look happy.
“Hey, bro,” Shay said as she crossed the room, relieved to have Odin in her sights again. “Where’s Fenfang?”
“Down at the other end,” Odin said. “C’mon next door.” They moved into the center room, where Twist was reading a newspaper.
“Nothing in the news about Sacramento,” he said.
Cruz flopped onto the room’s red vinyl couch. “This’ll work.”
He’d let Shay sleep the entire way, and Shay said, “Yeah, your turn—we’ll get out of your way.”
Odin said, “I have the first four letters of the password on drive six. Y-E-L-L, like in yellow, or yells.”
“Do we know how many letters?” Shay asked.
“Sixteen,” he said. He looked at her expectantly.
“What?”
“C’mon. You’re the one that does this,” he said. “What is it?”
“Yellow Rose of Texas?” Twist suggested.
“Too many letters,” Shay said.
“How do you know? Let’s count them off,” Twist said. He counted them on his fingers and came up with seventeen.
“You’re sure it’s not seventeen?” he asked Odin.
“It’s sixteen,” Odin said patiently. “That’s an entirely different number than seventeen.”
“All right, smart-asses, you figure it out,” Twist said.
“We will, but later,” Shay said. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I want to take a shower.”
“Go,” Twist said. He said to Odin, “I’ll take the other end room. The Twister doesn’t share. One of the beds here is yours; Cade and Cruz can work out who gets the other bed, who takes the couch.”
“Looks like Cruz already has the couch,” Shay said.
She turned toward the room where Fenfang was sleeping, and Odin said, “Hang on a minute.”
“Mmm?”
“Fenfang doesn’t have a phone. If Dash takes over again, she might try to run for it, so, without telling her, I wired your door shut—the chain on the door,” Odin said. “If she tries to get out that way, she’ll make some noise. You’ve got to be listening for it.”
Shay nodded. “We’ve made her a prisoner again.”
“Yeah, and I hate it,” Odin said. “Fenfang’s a nice person, but Dash is ruthless. We can’t forget.”
—
Shay took her shower and let hot water pour down on the back of her neck for five minutes. She’d left the door open so she could see Fenfang on the bed, still sleeping. She washed her hair, or what was left of it. She hardly felt like herself without her long red mane. It’d grow back—that piece of her could be the same again someday. She wondered about the other pieces.
As she was toweling off, she closed her eyes, lined up sixteen boxes in her mind. She’d been running the password problem somewhere beneath all her other thoughts. She counted letters.
Sixteen.
When she was dressed again, she watched Fenfang softly snoring for a moment, then knocked quietly on the connecting door. There was no answer, and when she went through, Cruz was asleep on the couch. She could faintly hear men’s voices from the other end room, knocked quietly on that door, and heard Odin say, “Yeah?”
She pushed through, nodded at Twist, and sat next to her brother on the bed. “Where’s the password block?”
Odin touched a couple of keys, and it came up. She typed in the words that had appeared in the boxes in her mind; the flash drive opened up.
Odin said, “I got the first part of that….”
Shay said, “Willamette Valley—spelled backward.”
Odin nodded. “Should have thought of that.” The man who’d thought up the passwords lived in the Willamette Valley, in Oregon, as had Odin and Shay.
Twist, who’d been sewing a button back on his sport coat, cut the thread with his teeth and said, “Willamette Valley, spelled backward. That’s so obvious, we all should have thought of it.”
“I know,” Odin said. “I’ve been sort of preoccupied—”
“I was joking, Odin,” Twist said.
“Oh.” Odin was mystified: didn’t see the joke.
Twist shook his head. “You know, you guys really do scare the shit out of me sometimes.”
Shay said, “Whatever. Let’s see what’s on the drive—”
Odin clicked a few keys, got a list: 1,124 files.
“Gonna take a while,” Odin said. He began clicking through the files and found experimental reports, some only a paragraph long, others several pages long, all in dense scientific language—some pure chemistry, others on cellular biology, more on electrochemical reactions. None of it comprehensible to the three of them.
“Gotta be important—but we’d have to get specialists to look at it,” Odin said. “Tell you what, I’ll go through these, see if there’s anything here that’s a plain-language report. When we go public, we could dump these on the Mindkill site and crowd-source the interpretation. If we could get enough people interested, we could probably pull together a good interpretation in a few days.”
“That’s all fine, except…maybe we don’t want people to know the details?” Twist said. “If we put too much of this research out there, are we inviting somebody else to pick up where Singular left off?”
Shay exchanged a look with Odin, and they both nodded. “That is a problem. I never thought of it quite like that,” Odin said.
“We need a few people we can trust to go through it,” Shay said. “I don’t know where we’d find them, though.”
“Maybe it’s for later,” Twist said. “We don’t need the research data right now. We need something that screams at people, that you’d see on YouTube and the television networks—like when Shay rappelled down that building, like when we hijacked the Hollywood sign. This research—this will hang them in the end, but right now we’re looking for photos and video that’ll go viral overnight.”
Odin nodded. “Here’s another problem: I’m not operating at full strength—I need to get my computer back. My girlfriend…well, my ex, anyway…Rachel probably has it. When everything was getting crazy, I was
afraid we’d get separated, so I put a program on her computer that will let me pinpoint her, if she’s using it. If I can get back on the Net, I think I could find her.”
“We could wait to use Cade’s computer, or we could go out and get any kind of computer you need—” Twist began.
Odin shook his head. “Mine’s got years of software on it. Tools. That software’s a major resource. The problem is, Singular could be watching Rachel, waiting for me to get in touch. It’s a risk.”
“And you’re not sure she even has your computer?”
“Well, we know she didn’t get picked up by the feds, and if she’s running, she would have taken it. I really need the software.”
“By software, you mean hacker stuff,” Twist said.
“Tools. We’ll have invisible access to lots of powerful databases. Like, if Singular is tracking us and flies its people to Vegas…I’ve got the airline databases, and I’ve got all the car rental companies.”
“All right, we’ll get a laptop and you can take a look,” Twist said. “If she’s anywhere close by, we’ll see what we can do.”
They talked for a while longer, then Cruz came in, yawned, scratched his chest, and said, “That nap sucked. What are we doing?”
“Going shopping,” Twist said.
—
Twist and Cruz went out to get a computer, pizzas, and Pepsi, and Odin and Shay moved into the middle room, where they could hear Fenfang if she woke.
Odin continued digging through the newly opened flash drive, and Shay went through West’s briefcase. Before they’d attacked the Singular prison, they’d left anything that Singular might find useful—phones, laptops, iPads, wallets—in the getaway cars, in case they should be captured.
Shay opened West’s wallet, and the first thing she saw was his driver’s license. His intelligent brown eyes looked straight at her, just as they had in their first meeting at her foster parents’ house, back when the future seemed so simple. Finish school, go to college, get a job….She’d liked West, though she hadn’t wanted to at the time.
The rest of the wallet was routine—credit cards, membership cards to a couple of San Francisco museums, and a key card. Shay tossed it over to Odin, who examined it and said, “Not been used much. Probably for a parking structure. Could be for an office door, but that’s unlikely. Could be useful. I’ll keep it.”
Outrage Page 4
